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Theory & Psychology
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On `Just Not Getting It'

A Reply to McNamee and to Raskin and Neimeyer

Nigel Mackay

University of Wollongong and Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis

McNamee (2003) and Raskin and Neimeyer (2003) largely bypass my analysis (Mackay, 2003) of the uses and misuses of `meaning' in psychotherapy, and of why the philosophy of the meaning-makers has no implications for therapy, tolerant or otherwise. They focus on my critique of constructionism and constructivism. Their responses repeat rather than address errors of which I criticized constructionism/ivism. Justifications of discourse pluralism end either in self-contradiction or in infinite regress. They ignore this and multiply their difficulties by treating rationality and logic as discourse-specific and optional. They neither `bridge incommensurate discourses' nor offer a `coherent constructivism'. Further, they identify me with a `familiar realism' of their own construction, misattributing to me such doctrines as foundationalism, essentialism, absolutism and belief in transcendent reality. Raskin and Neimeyer, in particular, compound these misconstructions by misrepresenting and distorting my terms and phrases. Thus they undermine their claims to both the epistemic and practical tolerance.

Key Words: constructivism • meaning • realism • social constructionism

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 13, No. 3, 411-419 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354303013003007
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